October 11, 2024 | By Kirstin Fawcett (AGI26)

Johnnies and winemaking go together like crisp rosé on a warm night. More than 15 graduates from Santa Fe and Annapolis work in viniculture or the winemaking industry more broadly—and the tally keeps on growing, thanks in large part to a strong tradition of alumni mentorship established by Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars founder Warren Winiarski (Class of 1952).

For a college without a dedicated course of study in oenology or even designated majors, Karen Kohut, St. John’s Executive Director of Advancement, felt this was a phenomenon worth exploring. In the fall of 2019, she approached Zach Rasmuson (A95), the chief operating officer at the Duckhorn Portfolio, to explore how the college and its Johnnie winemakers might collaborate in a mutually beneficial fashion. Through Rasmuson’s leadership following some experimentation with several virtual wine tastings he spearheaded for the St. John’s community during the pandemic, a new program-within-a-program was born: the “Johnnie Winemaker-in-Residence” program at Summer Classics, complete with tastings, educational seminars, and special samples of Johnnie-made wine.

The weather has cooled since Summer Classics, but the interest in Johnnie wines hasn’t: Summer Classics participants are eagerly anticipating 2025’s lineup, which in the past has included such winemaking heavy hitters as Rasmuson; Alex Kongsgaard (SF05) of Kongsgaard Wine; Grayson Hartley (SF02) of Preston Farm & Winery; Rory Williams (A07) of Frog’s Leap Winery; and Abe Schoener (A82), a former Annapolis tutor whose buzzy, experimental wine initiatives have included the Scholium Project and Los Angeles River Wine Company.

“St John’s has produced, and continues to produce, an extraordinary number of leading winemakers for a small college,” says Santa Fe President J. Walter Sterling (A93). “Having those people come back and join us for wine tastings and for seminar-style discussion of the craft and science and history of winemaking has been a wonderful added dimension to Summer Classics.”

With their breadth of knowledge, Johnnies are known for pursuing fields ranging from law to astrophysics, journalism, and even magic. Winemaking, however, seems to be popular among their ranks since it’s “a distillation of a lot of skills and interests that Johnnies develop over the course of their academic studies,” Kohut says. “It attracts people who want to do science, who want to work with their hands, who want to do something artistic and create something. It takes those Renaissance impulses that Johnnies have and combines them into a career path.”

Hartley of Preston Farm & Winery specializes in regenerative viticulture, or growing grapes in a way that promotes healthy soil. As one of 2024’s Johnnie Winemakers in Residence, he agrees with Kohut’s sentiment—and he posed a second theory as to why Johnnies become successful in the world of wine.

When it comes to winemaking, Hartley says, “you’re subject to the vagaries of mother nature, and so you really have to be able to learn on the go; all the textbooks in the world couldn’t prepare you for what can happen in a natural and agricultural setting. St John’s, in empowering students to encounter texts on their own rather than through someone else’s interpretation, is this empowering builder of resiliency, adaptiveness, and resourcefulness. These are all crucial to becoming a successful and thoughtful winemaker.”

Rasmuson, meanwhile, has told the college that he enjoys the ongoing intellectual challenge of “figuring out” different types of wine, which he describes much in the manner of a St. John’s seminar veteran. “I think previously I had assumed that all wine was just wine. But to have two very distinct wines in front of you and then to have this idea of ‘terroir’”—the soil, climate, and terrain influencing the grapes—“[wine] became something that almost immediately I understood as unknowable," he says. "But the pursuit of trying to know it was exciting in itself.”

The Washington Post even weighed in on the seemingly outsized connection in 2014, with Henry Speck of Henry of Pelham Winery in St. Catharines, Ontario, bringing his livelihood back to seminar: studying at St. John’s, he told the outlet, “focuses one’s thoughts, makes one identify the question that needs an answer.”

But at the end of the day, the Johnnie Winemaker-in-Residence program—and for that matter, the Johnnies-in-wine phenomenon—can be viewed as an ongoing toast to Winiarski’s memory. The winemaker and philanthropist co-led Summer Classics seminars for years prior to his death in June 2024, and he helped multiple generations of Johnnies gain a toehold in the field.

Rasmuson’s first job in wine was toiling as a harvest worker at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. Hartley recalls receiving advice from Winiarski as a college senior during an alumni dinner at La Posada de Santa Fe. And for Sterling, having a winemaker in residence in Santa Fe “provides a moment for us to reflect on Warren’s legacy, and his and Barbara Winiarski’s legacy at the college,” he says. “We had one session last summer devoted to tasting Stag Leap’s Wine Cellars’ wines and sharing a memorial tribute. It's been a great reminder of the richness, range, and dedication of our alumni community.”